by Janet Dawson
I put both hands firmly on David’s shoulders and pushed him away. “Take advantage is right.” I stepped away from him. “You enjoyed that way too much.”
He grinned at me, unrepentant, like a cat who’d had too much cream and figured he deserved it. “So did you, though probably not as much as I did. And you’ll never admit it. Well, back to business, shall we? I keep Tarcher away from you, and you continue your investigation.”
“Why is it that when you speak I catch a whiff of brimstone?” The ferry blew its horn, and the gangplank rattled as the crew took it up. “Negotiating with you is like striking a bargain with the devil.”
He moved closer, leaning so that his lips moved against my ear in a knowing whisper. “At the moment, you need the devil. Horns and all.”
Thirty-nine
WHEN I ARRIVED AT MY FRANKLIN STREET OFFICE, I took a chance on calling Robin Hartzell at home. It was after six, dinnertime, and it was likely the whole family, including Leon Gomes, would be there. I figured I could hang up if someone other than Robin answered the phone. Fortunately, it was she who picked up the receiver. I could hear voices in the background, Carol and Leon both, and the blare of the TV set.
“I’ve got to take another crack at Rob’s things,” I told her.
“The history assignment?” she said, for the benefit of the others, who might be listening. “Let me go back in my room. I’ll tell you what pages we’re supposed to read.”
A moment later the din on the other end of the phone receded, and I heard a door close. “I thought you weren’t gonna call me at home,” she said, keeping her voice down.
“Had to. When can I get into that garage?”
Robin sighed. “I think your best bet is to do it during the day. That way Mom will be at work and so will Leon. Before I go to school, I’ll leave that door from the garage to the backyard unlocked. All you’ll have to do is come in that gate at the side of the house.”
It was risky, given the fact that Leon seemed to come home from the Bates dairy plant at odd hours. But at the moment it was the only option I had. It also meant I’d have to feed Nancy some story about why I had to be away from Bates tomorrow morning. That is, I added, if David followed through on his promise to get Tarcher off my back. I had visions of arriving for work and getting apprehended before I got to the elevator.
“I’ll be there,” I told her. “As early as I can. Before you hang up, I need to know about that green car. The one I saw in the driveway the first night I was there.”
“Mom’s car? It got ripped off.”
Robin dropped her voice even lower as she told me essentially the same story Sid had related to me this past weekend. Robin and Doug had noticed the car missing when they got home from school, but neither of them gave it much thought. Their mother wasn’t due home from work until five-thirty or six. Leon had keys to Carol’s car, so they thought he’d taken it somewhere. It wasn’t until Carol and Leon got home, she on BART from San Francisco, he in his silver van, that anyone realized the car had been stolen.
“Your mother works at Rittlestone and Weper over in the city,” I said. “Is it possible someone there could have lifted her keys? Maybe had a copy made?”
“I guess so,” Robin said “I was there once. She’s the receptionist, and she works behind this thing that looks like a combination of a counter and a desk. It’s right out in the open, and she keeps her purse in one of the desk drawers. I don’t think she locks it up or anything. Anyone could get into it. But who the hell would want to steal a rusty old Buick?”
Someone who wanted to commit murder, I thought. Before I could ask any further questions, I heard a click on the line, as though someone in the Hartzell-Gomes household had picked up another extension.
I raised my voice an octave and said, “Yeah, well, I’ll see ya in class tomorrow.” Then I hung up the phone.
Buck Tarcher wasn’t waiting for me at the elevator of the Bates building on Tuesday morning. I assumed that David had held up his end of our pact. When I walked into Cube City, about five minutes after eight, Nancy Fong looked at me with a mixture of surprise and alarm. I was late, but judging from the expression on her face, she really hadn’t expected to see me.
“I’d like to take an early lunch,” I told her, making it up as the words left my mouth. “I have a... job interview. For a permanent position. I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour or so.”
She sat at her workstation, sorting through the morning mail, her brow furrowed. “I guess I don’t see any problem with that,” she said finally. She picked up her letter opener and began slitting envelopes. “What time do you need to leave?”
“Ten-fifteen.” Since I’d played the early lunch card, I didn’t think she’d buy off on my leaving any earlier.
“All right. So you’ll be back by eleven-fifteen.”
“Or eleven-thirty at the latest,” I assured her. It was a promise I might have trouble keeping. If Robin had been able to leave the door unlocked and I had an uninterrupted opportunity to search Rob’s belongings, I’d be there as long as it took to find some more pieces of the puzzle. And I wouldn’t care how Nancy felt about it.
Nancy finished opening the envelopes and began removing their contents, marking the first page of each with her date stamp and putting the items into separate piles for the attorneys. When she finished, she gathered the mail and left Cube City to deliver it.
“She’s in a mood this morning,” I commented.
Gladys, standing at the printer waiting for it to print out a document, looked over her shoulder and shrugged. “She’s always in a mood. When you weren’t here at eight, I asked if you’d called, and she acted as though you weren’t coming in at all.”
Which indicated to me that Nancy knew very well why Buck Tarcher had wanted to see me in his office last night. David may have handled Tarcher, but Nancy was still a wild card that could mess up the game.
“I noticed that Hank’s old office is dark,” I continued.
“Yeah,” Gladys said, picking up pages from the printer, “Tonya Russell hasn’t moved in yet. I hear she’s not too thrilled about getting shoved into the legal department.”
She didn’t know the half of it, I thought. “Is Patricia here?”
Gladys laughed, but without humor. “Oh, yes, Miss Charm and Personality has poked her head out of her cave and growled a few times.” She waved the pages at me. “This just had to get done right away. Don’t they all?”
Business as usual at Bates, I thought. The employees’ shock and dismay at word of the loss of Jeff Bates and Alex Campbell was starting to wear off, and resignation about the El Paso move was already deadening the blow. No doubt most of the people who worked here would do as Gladys planned, bide their time, look for other jobs, and wait until they were let go, so they could get the severance pay. Some, who were older, would take early retirement. Most of the Bates workforce were people with families and obligations, both of which required money.
I had obligations as well, to my own business as a private investigator, and the sooner I resolved the Lawter case, the sooner I could get back to my own life. I was starting to feel the way I did when things began to fall into place. Having made an excuse to get out of Bates that morning, it seemed the next two hours dragged. I transcribed tapes, filed, answered the phone, and as soon as the readout on my digital watch hit ten-fifteen I grabbed my purse and hurried out of Cube City.
Twenty minutes later I parked on Parrott Street in San Leandro and walked around the corner to Clarke. The neighborhood had that middle-of-the-day look streets get when most people who live in the houses were at work or at school. I didn’t see any delivery trucks, or mailmen, or neighbors watching from the windows. I walked quickly up the driveway of the Hartzell house, then along the sidewalk between it and the house next door. The gate was unlocked, as it had been on my previous visit. I opened it and stepped inside, moving past the garbage cans and recycling bins.
In daylight, the backyard looked bar
e and uninviting, with patchy brown grass and a concrete square of a patio furnished with cheap plastic chairs. I reached for the knob on the door leading to the garage, and it turned. Robin had kept her end of the bargain.
Once inside I turned on the overhead light for some illumination. I looked at the boxes piled in the middle of the garage. It looked as though they’d been moved since the last time I’d been here. In fact, several of them had been opened, and some of the contents were sticking up from the loose flaps.
Had someone started unpacking the boxes, preparing to sort through Rob’s things, deciding what to keep and what to discard? Or was someone looking for something, as I was?
Where to start? I approached the boxes. Where would Rob have hidden something important? I recalled the three call sheets that he’d secreted behind photographs of his family he’d kept at work. What if he used the same hiding place at home? Somewhere in all this mess must be other photographs, posters, artwork he’d hung on the walls of his apartment.
I had a lot of work to do and not much time to do it. The boxes from the kitchen were among those that had been opened. A quick and cursory glance through those revealed nothing more than pots, pans, flatware, and dishes. The other boxes, labeled “BEDROOM” and “LIVING ROOM,” were more likely, so I concentrated on those.
In no time, the suit I wore, one I’d borrowed from Ruby, was covered with dust and grime. I’d broken a fingernail and bruised my knee. And my back hurt from moving boxes around. I found more framed photographs, as well as a couple of photo albums, but nothing was hidden behind the pictures. Nor was there anything stashed in the larger pieces that had been wrapped in the newspaper and leaned against the wall.
Eleven-fifteen came and went, and so did eleven-thirty. As noon approached I had to face the possibility that Leon Gomes would come home for lunch. Don’t think about that, I told myself. Just keep looking.
The box in front of me held two oversized self-sealing plastic bags, the kind I use to store things in the freezer. Inside them were eight-by-ten color photographs, matted but unframed. The first was a shot of the Point Reyes lighthouse, and the second showed a group of elephant seals snoozing on the sand down at Año Nuevo State Reserve.
I opened the Point Reyes bag and slipped a finger between the picture and the matte, and felt something that I was sure didn’t belong there. After I pulled it out and had a good look at it, I reached eagerly for the elephant seals.
By the time Leon Gomes came home for lunch, at twenty minutes past twelve, I was ready for him. I straightened, stretching and working the kinks out of my back and thighs, as I heard him kill the engine of his van and unlock the front door. He moved into the kitchen, whistling as he opened cupboards.
I walked across the concrete floor to the door leading to the kitchen. Leon Gomes whirled around as I entered the kitchen, nearly dropping the jar of mayonnaise he held. On the counter in front of him were two slices of bread and a package of deli cold cuts.
“Who’re you?” he demanded. “What the fuck are you doing in my garage?”
I smiled. “We need to talk, Leon.”
Forty
“I SWEAR TO GOD, I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.” Leon Gomes was sweating, and his voice was shrill with panic. He was wearing his work clothes, dark brown pants, light brown shirt with the embroidered Bates Best logo in blue on the left breast pocket. Right now damp half circles stained the armpits of his shirt, and moisture beaded on his upper lip.
He’d started to sweat when he saw the three sheets of paper I was holding. He knew what they were. No doubt he’d been looking for them when he and his buddies packed up Rob’s things and moved them out of the apartment. Judging from the way those boxes out in the garage had been disturbed between my last visit and this one, he was still looking for them. But I’d found them first.
His hand shook as he set the jar of mayo on the counter. Now he was backed up against the cabinets, all thought of lunch forgotten. The only thing on Leon’s mind at the moment was saving his ass.
“Rob didn’t kill himself.” I leaned forward. “He didn’t take a convenient fall from that window, either. He was murdered, and you know it. You’re into this up to your eyeballs.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” he insisted. “It was Nolan.”
“And you were only following orders. Passing the buck up the chain of command. Now that’s an innovative defense. Dates all the way back to World War Two. So you’re telling me Nolan Ward killed Rob?”
“Hell, I don’t know who killed Rob. I just know it wasn’t me.”
“Just how far up the ladder of responsibility does it go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” I fingered the papers, all three photocopies, all three smoking guns. “First we have an invoice and a newspaper article.” I held up the paper, onto which Rob had copied both items. The article was the same one I’d found tucked into Rob’s calendar. “The article says this dairy in Fremont was cited for fecal contamination of milk, a leading cause of salmonella. The invoice says you bought raw milk from that dairy on July twenty-first, after it was cited. Is this dairy one of your regular suppliers?”
He shook his head. “No, no. But Nolan was always after me to cut costs. The guy who runs the dairy, I know him from way back. He lost some business after he got that citation, and he was trying to get back on his feet. He cut me a deal on several tankers of raw milk. And Nolan okayed it.”
“Which brings us to item number two,” I said. “A memo from you to Nolan, dated July twenty-fourth. Seems you had a little problem the day before with some equipment at the plant. As I understand the pasteurization process, you’re supposed to bring raw milk to a high temperature and hold it at that temperature for a period of time. That kills bacteria like salmonella. But if something goes wrong in that process and the milk doesn’t get pasteurized...” I glanced at the memo, then back at Leon. “Suppose you tell me just what went wrong that day with the diversion valve.”
Leon took a deep, shaky breath. “The heat exchanger’s got yards and yards of pipe, with thermometers at either end. We pump the raw milk through, so many feet per second, and by the time it gets through all the pipe, it’s supposed to be pasteurized. The diversion valve is at the end. If the thermometer shows the temperature of the milk has dropped below the correct levels, the valve’s supposed to send the milk back through the heat exchanger.”
“But the valve malfunctioned.”
“Yeah. The alarm went off. We fixed the valve right away. But some of that unpasteurized milk must have gotten into the ice cream mix. Hell, we produce thousands of units a day. I didn’t know anything was wrong.”
“Until Rob came to you in late August, and told you about those eleven calls he’d received. All of them from people who complained they’d gotten sick after eating ice cream products from your plant.”
Leon’s voice took on a defensive whine. “So? It’s not like anybody died.”
“Not yet, anyway. Certainly not like that listeriosis outbreak down in LA in 1985. Forty-six people died.” I watched Leon’s face turn gray and sag. “Oh, yes, I’ve done a background check on you. You used to work for a company that made cheese, the same company that the listeriosis outbreak was traced to. Seems to me you’ve made a habit of cutting corners as well as costs.”
He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “I spoke to some of those people who got sick. One of the worst cases was a six-year-old girl who wound up in the hospital. But that’s not your problem, right? Rob thought it was. He made copies of those call sheets before he sent them down to production. Maybe he figured that no one would do anything about them. That seems to be the case, ever since Al Dominici retired. Nolan has a tendency to ignore anything that might increase costs or slow down production.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Leon muttered.
“Yeah, you just make product and move it through on schedule. Salmonella in the ice cream? No big deal. Who cares if
people get sick? Not you.”
I heard a gasp of indrawn breath and looked up to see Robin Hartzell. I hadn’t heard her come through the front door. She was glaring at Leon as though he were some disgusting lower life-form. “What’re you doing here?”
“I cut class,” she told me. “To see if you needed any help.”
“What did you hear?”
“Enough.” She advanced on Leon. “You son of a bitch, if you killed him—”
“I didn’t.” He raised his arms as if to ward off a blow. Robin looked angry enough to hit him.
“Let me finish this,” I said, putting a restraining hand on her arm. I turned to Leon. “So Rob checked up on you. He discovered your link to that listeriosis outbreak. Since you manage the dairy plant, which makes Bates Best ice cream, he thought that pointed to you. I don’t know when he found this memo about the diversion valve, but a few weeks ago he confronted you about the situation. He threatened to tell the authorities.”
“Yeah, yeah, he said we should recall all the ice cream we made that day.” Leon shrugged, as though it were no big deal. “Hell, I thought he was overreacting. The stuff had been out on the market for a month, and this was the first I heard of anyone getting sick. Besides, I don’t have the authority to order a recall. Only people who can do that are those high muckety-mucks at corporate. Nolan would have to approve it, and he wouldn’t make a move without getting a go-ahead from that lawyer up in legal.”
“Patricia Mayhew. Who else would Nolan check in with?”
“Him and that Rittlestone guy are joined at the hip,” Leon said. “He’s the one put Nolan in charge of production in the first place. Hell, Nolan wouldn’t take a piss unless Rittlestone told him it was okay.”
It looked as though the rungs of the ladder were getting higher every time Leon opened his mouth. “So Rob was down in production sometime in late August, asking about those call sheets, and he discovered that Sue Ann Fisk had no record of them.” She still didn’t, as I’d discovered on Monday.
